Survive for a Purpose

On October 1, 2025, the White House sent letters to nine US universities asking campus leaders to pledge support for the administration’s higher education agenda or risk losing access to federal funding. A ten-page “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” was attached to the letters. Among other demands, the Compact requires institutions to freeze their tuition rate for five years, cap the enrollment of international students, commit to strict gender definitions, and change or abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Institutions have until October 20, 2025, to provide written comments in response. The White House is aiming to have agreements signed by November 21, 2025.

In a October 3, 2025, statement, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), where I work as a senior advisor for strategic initiatives, described the Compact as “an ultimatum” that sought to impose an “ideologically driven vision for higher education through unilateral executive action and the coercive use of public funding.” The statement notes that American colleges and universities are “open to change and have always welcomed constructive reform,” but AAC&U “strongly opposes any alternative that would erode or eviscerate essential freedoms and promote instability.”

The proposed Compact is the latest and most extreme example of the federal government’s attacks on higher education over the past nine months, including slashing research funds, dismantling the Department of Education, and banning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Too often, the government is forcing institutional leaders to choose between the financial health of their institution and its ability to fulfil its educational mission. In deciding how to respond, leaders should prioritize not only their institution’s survival, but also why it is worth preserving.

In addition to AAC&U’s statement, higher education experts from across the political spectrum have responded to the Compact with undisguised alarm. The American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess, a longtime conservative critic of higher education, called the Compact “lawless adventurism” and noted that “there is no law that enables the White House or ED to unilaterally condition higher ed funds on…arbitrary demands.” Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at the liberal think tank New America, wrote in the Atlantic that the “administration is inviting universities to voluntarily put on a yoke and hand it the keys.” In a detailed analysis published in Reason, libertarian legal scholar Eugene Volokh described several elements of the Compact as likely unconstitutional. “It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject” the Compact, argued University of California, Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky in the New York Times. “If any schools capitulate, the pressure will be enormous on all to fold. The only solution is solidarity and collective action.”

Yet for many campus leaders, the question of whether to sign the Compact is far from straightforward. Under current political conditions, it seems unlikely that individual institutions, or indeed the entire sector, will survive without acceding to some unpalatable demands. A college or university president who says no risks not only their own job but also making their institution a target. A recent article in the Atlantic explored tensions between university presidents who see an imperative to adopt conservative-friendly reforms in an effort to weather the storm, and other presidents who are instead doubling down on defending academic freedom and university autonomy.

In truth, college and university presidents need to adopt elements of both approaches. In order to continue serving their students and communities, higher education leaders need to make hard choices that will allow their institutions to survive—but they must remember that their goal is for institutions to survive for a purpose, not merely to continue to exist.

Surviving for a purpose means keeping the mission of an institution at the forefront of decision-making. It means trying to retain as many core academic values as is politically feasible, even when doing so poses moderate risks. It means embracing reforms that can legitimately improve the work of the institution, regardless of where those reforms originate. It means pushing past bureaucratic and procedural inertia to make necessary changes, demonstrating a nimbleness that can help ward off government takeover efforts. It means communicating across institutions to gain insights into what is working and resisting the urge to go it alone.

Most of all, it means drawing a red line between the parts of higher education that are open for negotiation and those which are inviolable at any cost. As Dartmouth University President Sian Leah Beilock, who has won plaudits from conservatives for her leadership, said in her response to the Compact, “You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”

In making critical decisions about their institutions, college and university leaders gather input from a variety of campus and community stakeholders. Ultimately, however, the choice about whether to sign the Compact comes down to a president’s own judgment. In exercising that judgment, leaders should prioritize not only the financial health of their institutions, but also their mission and purpose.